This invention relates generally to printers and printer connected hardware used in cash-less slot machines and gaming, and more specifically to hardware and software operating within this equipment performing promotional ticket printing, promotional data basing and printer and printer connected hardware based promotional ticket triggering.
The gaming machine manufacturing industry provides a variety of gaming machines for the amusement of gambling players. An exemplary gaming machine is a slot machine. A slot machine is an electro-mechanical game wherein chance or the skill of a player determines the outcome of the game. Slot machines are usually found in casinos or other more informal gaming establishments.
The gaming machine manufacturers have provided cash-less enabled games to the market for the last five years, and there now exists a broad population of such games in the casino industry. Cash-less enabled games are so named due to the fact that they can conduct their player's financial exchange with a mixture of traditional paper and coin currency and vouchers redeemable for cash or game credits.
Two pieces of necessary equipment for a cash-less enabled game is a printer to produce the vouchers, and a bill acceptor that supports automatic reading of the vouchers. In a cash-less enabled gaming system, when a player cashes out, the game is signaled and depending on the size of the pay out, it can either present coins in the tradition method of a slot machine, or it can cause the printers which are installed in such machines to produce a voucher including the value of the pay out. The voucher may then either be redeemed for cash at the cashier's cage for currency, or it may be inserted into one of the casino's games' bill acceptor, at which point the network and server to which the game is connected will recognize the voucher as valid, redeem it and place the appropriate amount of playing credits on the game.
Over the years, cash-less enabled games have found an increasing acceptance and use in the gaming industry with both the players, who enjoy the speed of play and ease of transporting their winnings around the casino, and the casinos who have realized significant labor savings in the form of reduced coin hopper reloads in the games, and an increase in revenue due to speed of play. The broad installation base of cash-less enabled games guarantees a wide installed base of networked games and their installed printers which may be used to print coupons and promotions for the captive player audiences.
In typical casino operations, the games are networked to a main server which monitors various metrics of activity on the games for regulatory, accounting and promotional activities related to frequent player club cards which participating patrons insert into the games when they play. The server related to promotions for player club cards is referred to as the Player Tracking Sever. Gaming machines share real-time play metrics with the Player Tracking Server in order to support frequent player incentives.